


Orient

by Sineala



Category: Avengers (Comics), Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616, New Avengers (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Avengers Vol. 5 (2013), Gen, M/M, Pre-Slash, The Illuminati (Marvel), Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-24
Updated: 2014-08-24
Packaged: 2018-02-14 11:52:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2190690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sineala/pseuds/Sineala
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The futurist needs a map.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Orient

**Author's Note:**

> No spoilers past Avengers #29 & New Avengers #19, because that was when I wrote this. This is basically me saying hi to a shiny new fandom and seeing if I can write a very small something that sounds like Tony Stark. Beta by Magicasen.

These are the things he half-remembers, slipping through time:

Steve's fist, connecting with his face, a bright shock of unexpected pain.

(Unexpected? He'd known, he'd known it was going to slip, it was always going to slip. Not even a mindwipe would have held him forever. He knew that, maybe, and he did it anyway. Maybe he always wanted it to fail. Maybe he deserved this.)

"I'm going to beat you bloody," Steve says, and the look in his eyes--

Is that how Steve looks when he's going to kill him? When there's only rage, when nothing of his principles is holding him back?

Tony knows he knew what that looked like, once. Once he had seen Steve, standing over him. Once he had taunted him, begged him. The eyewitnesses were clear. The footage was clearer. But none of the cameras had shown Steve's face, and he'll never know what it looked like now. His own mindwipe... well, he's never coming back from that one, is he? 

Shame. He had such a good comparandum going for Captain America's homicidal rage.

Consumption, he thinks. The idea has consumed him. He's lost perspective. He thinks of the disease, thinks of coughing up blood.

"You'll have to kill me," he says, in the future he's leaving, and he pulls off the helmet. If Steve is going to break his face, he might as well make it easier.

His eye is swelling up. 

He can taste blood as he falls. He thinks maybe he owes that one to Clint.

The phantom hands on his face, in his imaginings, maybe in his memory (he doesn't remember), are kind, and, no, he doesn't want to remember this (he can't hope that it was real), he knows he doesn't deserve this, this of all things, because it's Steve's hands, splayed across his cheekbones, and they aren't hurting him, they aren't, and Steve is whispering something in his ear, something soft and forgiving. Steve is holding him up, letting him lean on him, holding him together where he's broken. And maybe it never happened and maybe he dreamed it and maybe it's going to happen and maybe it never will now, God, Tony doesn't know. (It wasn't real. It wasn't. He just wanted it so badly.)

He falls. 

He lands.

He isn't particularly surprised to see where he's ended up.

"I've got a problem," he tells Black Swan. He's telling her all kinds of things. It isn't her he needs to confess this to. "Our thing -- it's consumed me."

Unsurprisingly, she doesn't have answers. Maybe she does, but she's not giving him any. He didn't really think she would. Not even when he threatens her. Maybe he can't pull off the threats. Nothing feels real. And then it's incursion time, and he's got to to go. He can hear her murmuring something to Reed as he leaves.

He's coming to the end of himself?

Well. Not like he hasn't done that before.

He's not sure he was supposed to overhear that. It doesn't matter.

But he's always gotten out of it, somehow, at last. There was always more of him to go. Maybe this time will be it. Maybe he doesn't get a reprieve. Maybe he doesn't get to live through this.

There's blood on his face. There's blood on his hands. (God, there's so much blood on his hands.)

He's stanched it all, wrapped it all, his face, his chest, his hand. It's almost like armor, but it doesn't protect him. Maybe his armor doesn't either. Not from this.

Steve knows. Tony never wanted this. Funny thing is, Steve doesn't know that.

"We've done terrible things," Reed says.

Tony can't look at him. He can't even flinch. The arms dealer offers up his grandest design. He's never really left the family business after all.

God, but he wants a drink.

"We can't stop," Tony agrees.

The Avengers will come down on them and he's earned it. They've earned it.

He used to think he was better than this. He used to think he could atone. That he could make Ho Yinsen's death mean something. That he could make his life mean something. That he had people who believed in him, who believed he was good, who believed he could do right, who made him be better. Who made him want to be good. Who made him want -- things that aren't even worth thinking about. Never going to happen. Never going to be real.

The man who once believed in him, who fought at his side more times than he can count, is the reason his face is bleeding.

Maybe Steve's given up on him at last.

(Certainly he'd given up on him before. It's not like Tony can remember it.)

If he has been consumed, what is left of him? Who is he now?

This wasn't what he wanted. They were supposed to be able to solve this. There were supposed to be better options. Better choices. Ways to keep them in check. Another solution. He is become Death, the destroyer of worlds. Lovely quotation. Always relevant, isn't it? Steve was supposed to be their moral compass. His moral compass.

He's unmoored. Lost. He doesn't know where they're going. The futurist needs a compass. The futurist needs a fucking map.


End file.
